Under Carlo Ancelotti we had one of our best seasons ever. We won the domestic double and made records in the history books. Fast forward one year and you see Carlo gone and us with a new manager with half the population worried, and the other half relaxed. So I decided to evaluate a few facts.
Our failure last season wasn’t down to Carlo alone, or even our players entirely for that matter. It was down to him being undermined from the start of last season. How, you may ask. Well, in the beginning, we let go of Deco, Ballack, Joe Cole, Belletti and Carvalho. We just ended up bringing Ramires. And I don’t blame Carlo for that.
I saw (and heard) things about us wanting to sign Van der Vart at that time, along with other talk of Carlo not wanting to sell Ballack. The way I see it, VDV was to replace an outgoing Deco (as he was our trequartista) and Ballack was to be retained to make sure we didn’t suffer due to injuries. However, to implement the youth policy we had, we let Ballack go, and our club decided VDV wasn’t good enough.
When Carlo saw the big hole left in our midfield, he made last efforts to sign (and succeeded in signing) Ramires for an inflated £18m. Had Carlo had it his way, we might have had VDV, and maybe last season wouldn’t have been so bad.
Anyways, let’s look at what we had in our double season in our midfield. We had Deco, a trequartista (or as some may know it as a No.10 role), Ballack (who was a box-to box midfielder with immense technical talent), Lampard (who is a goal-scoring box-to-box midfielder), Essien (used as anchorman although I’ve seen him as a box-to-box too), Mikel (used as a makeshift anchorman) and finally Joe Cole (a versatile player capable of passing and opening defences). The only problem that it had was that we didn’t have a natural anchorman, and that made us vulnerable to counters.
But this was a very powerful and well built midfield and had good attacking players. The midfield we had last season consisted of Lampard, Essien, Mikel, Ramires (box-to-box) and Benayoun (trequartista or No.10). The problem here was that we had 3 box-to-box players, but generally no one to open defences other than Yossi. This generally meant that whenever we attacked, we simply flooded their box and relied on our full-backs to cross, and what happened was history. And having no true box-to-box meant that we usually had one box-to-box be the holding player, and thus they lacked the technical quality to play there (against Man City away last season, it was a Ramires error that cost us, remember).
This imbalance was the problem that Carlo couldn’t tackle and didn’t even in January (God knows why). The weakness in midfield and the general lack of pace and creativity cost us the title, and Carlo his job. But things are a lot different now. We have younger players coming through who will hopefully inject pace into the team. We have a new manager who wants to play a different sort of game, and his transfers show you he decided to bring in the balance back.
We got Romeu (a natural DM) and played Mikel and Josh as CMs instead of DMs (both can be like deep-lying playmakers) along with Yossi, Lamps, Ramires and not to mention Mikel can play as a DM too. Now, we can have 1 DM, 1 deep-lying playmaker and 1 box-to-box, or maybe 1 DM, 1 deep-lying playmaker and 1 trequartista. With these, we’ll have strength up front and balance in the middle of the park as well. The only thing lacking here is the young trequartista that all us fans want. Modric is an option, and with Lukaku’s arrival looking imminent bringing Modric may become the last piece of the puzzle.
Lastly I would like to add that although we have several inconsistent forwards in Kalou, Anelka and Malouda, I’m sure by rotating a bit, we might be lucky enough to find one in the right form. And the way our CFs have been helping the team, I’m sure we can go somewhere. Just that one No.10 and I’m sure we’re good to go.
UP THE BLUES! KTBFFH
With thanks to TheBlueFan for this piece!
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